Immaculate

(Michael Mohan, USA/Italy, 2024)

This is a film that rests upon one brilliant plot revelation – which writer Andrew Lobel must have fought to protect in the years the project took to reach the screen – and I will therefore not be giving it away here.

Suffice to say, the set-up plonks young American Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney, also co-producer) into an ornate Italian convent. (Those who keep up with the latest mainstream releases will notice an uncanny affinity here with the expository scenes of The First Omen.) This institution has a peculiarity: it’s a home for very old, dying nuns – which semi-rationalises some of the odd apparitions Cecilia experiences while trying to sleep at night. The ancient dear who cuts off a bit of her youthful, flowing hair with a pair of scissors, for example: what’s that about?

In many other movies, the presence of Cecilia so far from home would bring forth a bunch of backstory. This is, mercifully, not so much the case here. She merely explains to her comrade Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli from the TV series Baby) that her local Church closed down (lack of attendees), and – more dramatically – that she once experienced a near-death experience under an icy lake, which is visualised in a couple of strong images. She is therefore looking for her true spiritual mission, her calling in life … and her new superiors, especially Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), are keen to provide her with that.

The title already cues you into the eventuality that an immaculate conception – how I was amazed by those words as a little, Catholic kid! – is, somehow, at stake. Given those nocturnal hallucinations and shocks experienced by Cecilia, director Michael Mohan (who has previously made two romantic comedies and the enjoyable thriller The Voyeurs [2021] with Sweeney) well knows he’s treading in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) waters. (And not long before Natalie Erika James’ prequel to that property, Apartment 7A, is unveiled.) But, cleverly, Mohan and the team don’t follow that line of homage all the way through.

In fact, mid-way, Immaculate takes a more Buñuelian turn. As spectators, we may well be hunting for signs of sexual abuse and officially-covered-up perversion. But it seems that the values and ideals of religious worship really do govern whatever is going down behind these convent walls – and, since the joint comes complete with not only sinister back rooms full of strange equipment, but also an entire set of off-limit catacombs, there’s significant matter to uncover.

It’s crisply directed – even the touches of modish giallo tribute don’t slacken the pace or send it off into Strickland-style over-elaborations. And it has an excellent final scene – just two shots – in which Sweeney produces the most incredible, authentic and prolonged screams I’ve ever heard in the movies. If I were today remixing Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998), I’d definitely pop that fragment in somewhere.

© Adrian Martin 16 June 2024